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The four Areas of Focus; the 21 competencies; and three levels of behaviour in the ELRHA framework (pages 34-38) is a fascinating approach in dealing wth humanitarian competencies. I find it useful when I look at some of these competencies which I could improve in…these including using technology (where I’m sometimes a bit of a dinosaur!).
The Core competencies are very in-depthly explained and it helped me (as a new student to crisis risk management) to get an understanding of what skills are involved generally in the area. It would be very helpful as you say Chris to compare yourself and be able to grow in. It would be useful for setting expectations. I wonder how it would work for those who only meet some of the standards and not others? for instance if someone went for an office job in the NGO would they have to come up to all the competency standards or would this just depend on the ‘humanitarian’ job (office vs. field) that the individual goes for?
Hi Brianna, You raise some good questions here. I think that the ELRHA framework is a really useful way of self-assessment, and can be a useful tool for professional development (PD). Depending on your experience, NGOs (or other agencies) wouldn’t expect you to have all these skills. However in an interview, if you were able to demonstrate that you know about this ELRHA framework, and were basing your PD around that, I think this would be mightily impressive.
I found the ELRHA document super interesting. It had some really good tips that came out of the survey that was conducted, that could help me in understanding what competencies/areas I should work on that translate more broadly in different organisations in the sector.
The 4 areas that people in the survey recognised as key knowledge to have in the sector was something I took note of:
Needs Assessment
Safety and Security Issues
International Humanitarian Law
Monitoring and evaluation
To me it seems as though these 4 categories stretch into most other knowledge categories listed (eg WASH, public health, accounting) as it would be handy to have an understanding of the above 4 key categories in all other aspects of work that you do (though not necessarily all?)I also think it makes sense that some people in the survey found it hard to prioritise skills (eg multi-tasking, team building) as they felt different skills were important at different times.
Hi all, my apologies for joining the discussion late!
I had a read through the ELRHA document over the weekend. I found the core competencies to be a really valuable list of the kind of skills, characteristics, awareness and ethos that a practitioner needs in order to provide high standards and efficacy of assistance. I was thinking about how in law, to practice you need to pass your bar exam following your law degree. Similarly, I think that a post-degree certification that’s based on the ELRHA’s Core Humanitarian Competencies would likewise ensure the standard of professionalism when entering the humanitarian sector. In this way, it would help prepare new practitioners who might lack in some of the competencies before entering the sector; refresher exams could be used in a professional development context as practitioners move through levels 2 and 3 of the competencies framework. What does everyone else think about this idea, is it feasible?
The other thing that I found really valuable reading through the competencies was assessing myself in each of the areas to help determine my own preparedness. It has given me a good idea of both where my strengths are and of the areas I need to explore further.
Cheers, John
Hi John (et al.0, thanks for your comments and thoughts here. i agree that the framework can be useful for self-analysis/assessment. Ideally having a global competency framework for global humanitarian practitioiners makes sense – the challenge is getting key stakeholders to agree on this and reads off the same sheet of music!
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